Cheers for the Met's new 'House of the Dead'

Published 7:00 pm, Monday, November 16, 2009

By DAVID A. ROSENBERG

Hour Theater Critic

First, boos for the Met's opening night of "Tosca." Now, cheers for the company's "From the House of the Dead," the 1930 work having its belated premiere at the house. How peculiar that a well-known piece should evoke such vitriol, while a rarity should bring praise. Even stranger, the two productions use the same set designer, Richard Peduzzi, whose gray, towering walls work much better for Leos Janácek's grim "Dead" than Verdi's tragic but romantic "Tosca."

Besides the subject matter, one reason that "Dead" excites is the staging by celebrated director Patric Chéreau. During the pulsating overture, we see shadowy men wandering about a courtyard, like the dead in limbo. Prisoners in a Russian gulag (the time is mid-19th century), they look aimless and dangerous. Significantly, they are interchangeable, as befits an outsider's first impression of convicts.

Soon, however, individuals emerge to tell their tales. Gorianchikov is a political prisoner, a nobleman whose status inflames the lower-class inmates and gets him an immediate beating as ordered by the sadistic Commandant. He later shows his compassionate side by mentoring the young, illiterate Alyeya.

Other stories deal with murder, torture, love and lust. Longest and most detailed is Shishkov's telling of marrying a girl he thought "damaged" by a man named Filka. When he finds out that not only is she a virgin but still loves the other man, he kills her. Ironically, Filka, is a fellow prisoner. After listening agitatedly to Shishkov's story, he meets his own fate, prompting a violent reaction from Shishkov.

Trapped, these prisoners take refuge in sudden violence, mockery and staging erotic theatrics such as one interlude about Don Juan and another about a miller's faithless wife. Although told partly in gleeful drag, the plays are shot through with hopelessness, ending in a dance of death that is reminiscent of an Ingmar Bergman film.

Taken from a novel by Dostoyevsky, Janácek's libretto is more a series of vignettes than a work with a specific dramatic arc. What ties it together is a symbolic, injured eagle which the prisoners nurse back to health before releasing it to freedom at the end (awkwardly handled in this production). Janácek's angular score is Wagnerian in scope. The music becomes another character, underlining emotions, sometimes with dramatic climaxes, sometimes with remnants of Czechosolvakian folk tunes. Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, making his Met debut, expresses the score's sonorities, abetted, of course, by the great Met orchestra, with special mention of percussionist Javier Diaz' work on drums, chains and hammers.

Of the singers, baritone Peter Mattei is magnetic as Shishkov, painting a vivid picture of a man whose demons won't let go. It's a strong cast all around, highlighted by the unmatchable Met chorus.

"From the House of the Dead" may not be an opera anyone would want to see twice. But, as a striking musical portrait of what happens to human beings who have been thrown away and forgotten by society, it's something to ponder. These may be criminals but they're also men in pain. "My dear children, I'll never see you again," laments one prisoner. "My eyes will never again see the land where I was born," sings the chorus. That neither statement is infused with false sentimentality is thanks both to Janácek's jagged music and Chéreau's brilliant staging.

Now Playing:

"From the House of the Dead" is at the Met Opera, Lincoln Center, N.Y., Nov. 21, 28 and Dec. 2 at 8 p.m., Nov. 24 at 9 p.m., Dec. 5 at 1 p.m. Call (212) 362-6000 or visit www.metopera.org.